Q: Is there a way to unlock an iphone with a non-responsive touch screen?

Try holding down the on/off and the home buttons at the same time until you see the Apple logo. 

and then? it restarts but still the lines are there

I am posting this solution hoping that it will help others.

My son dropped his iPhone5C and the screen is cracked.  One small area still works, but he couldn't enter his passcode and therefore couldn't sync with iTunes to backup the iPhone before giving it to someone to repair.

I searched online and most people said it couldn't be done. However, in this particular situation I was able to log in.  Essentially, I was able to turn on the VoiceOver mode and that allowed me to use the small area of the screen that still functioned. In VoiceOver mode, you swipe left/right to highlight different keys on the screen that can be selected by double-tapping.  Step by step, this is what I did:

- Hold Home key to turn on Siri, told Siri to 'Turn on VoiceOver'

- Press Home key to get to main unlock screen

- Swipe right/left until 'Slide to Unlock' is selected

- Double tap

Now the passcode page comes up

- Swipe right/left to highlight the correct keys on the keyboard and double tap to 'enter' each one.

- Swipe to highlight enter/done and double tap to submit the passcode.

Once the iPhone was unlocked, the first thing I did was backup the phone and download all the photos.

Hope this helps people.

Phil

Thank you! Just wanted to say this worked for me. Today all of a sudden my voice over was on (I never use it), white lines showed around each "button" and I couldn't swipe my screen at all (like to unlock it). And voice over kept saying "screen locked". By your method above, I figured out to double tap to reach the passcode screen, and then enter the passcode by double tapping each number, and it finally let me in. After that, all I had to do was push the home button 3 times quickly and it turned voice over off and my screen was "swipe-able" (vs having to double click things.) Who knew it was such an easy fix? Thanks!

THIS DID THE TRICK!!!!!

I tried EVERYTHING.  I could not access the right side of my phone (screen).... this prevents the user from selecting the OK button which obviously will prevent the use from doing A LOT of things -- the Most important UNLOCKING THE PHONE by entering the password.  It took a few tries to get the hand of the voice over mode but IT WORKED.  Phone unlocked! backed up and new phone is ready for installation with ALL MY old phone's data, apps, photos, EVERYTHING. Great job for figuring this out!!!

This worked ! thanks

Wow!! Thank you so much. This helped me tremendously

You are my hero!

I dropped my Iphone 5C and i couldnt get all my stuff back becuz i wiped it to try to revive the touchscreen

but only the right half of my touchscreen works

And with this method i can login with Icloud and get all my stuff back

Thnx man!!

i noticed this has worked for alot of others with similar problems to me, but my whole screen is all lines and really dont know how to resolve the problem of unlocking my phone to back it up to my macbook

Thanks!!! Just replying to say this worked for me too.

But in my case, I couldn't get Siri to turn on VoiceOver for me, so used the iTunes method:

1) I connected the iPhone to the computer that I normally sync with

2) Located the iPhone icon on the top left corner of the window (in previous iTunes, instructions were to locate the device's name under "DEVICES" on the left hand panel of iTunes)

3) Click on "Summary" under the Settings section (which should be the top half of the left hand panel)

4) On the right hand panel, scroll all the way down to the Options section and click "Configure Accessibility"

5) A box will pop-up, with the default = Seeing: Neither, change this to Seeing: Voiceover

6) Hit OK and you are done! VoiceOver turned on

Hope this helps the rest!

This was a GENIUS solution! After thinking we'd have to scrap all the data on my husband's phone after he dropped it and "fritzed" the left side of the screen (the side that says "trust this computer" when you plug it in - so there was no way to select "Trust this computer" when I plugged it into iTunes, though I could unlock the screen!). Anyway, I was just about to pull my hair out when I saw your comment. I turned on VoiceOver and because the settings are different I was able to fake "double-tap" the "trust" button with a stylus (super ghetto but IT WORKED)! Anyway, thank you, you saved the data. Now we are able to dump his iphone data onto his new phone. THANK YOU!!!!!

Just to clarify for anyone else having this issue...the way I fake "double-tapped" is because when you swipe once in VoiceOver mode, it thinks you are selecting a button for it to READ, but not that you are "tapping" the button. So if you swipe from right to left where the "Trust/Don't Trust" buttons are very quickly twice, it thinks you are double-tapping the button, meaning EVEN IF the left side of your screen where the button is doesn't work, you can still fake your iPhone into thinking that you tapped it (which you did).

Hope this helps someone else!